Skinny Acer notebook delivers six-day battery life
Just ask Windows 7
Acer appears to have found a solution to notebook users' battery life woes. Its Aspire Timeline 1810TZ apparently delivers a 10x improvement in runtime when compared to other thin'n'light laptops equipped with six-cell lithium-ion batteries.
After five hours' usage at a day-long conference the other day, we thought we'd check on how well the Windows 7-based machine would continue to run. We were staggered to that, despite using up almost 60 per cent of the notebook's charge, we still had a whopping 66 hours left to go.
How much runtime?
Click for full-size screenshot
On that basis, we calculate that the 65.5 hours runtime from a 41 per cent charge means that, when topped up, the battery would drive the 1810TZ for 159 hours 45 minutes.
Or just over six-and-a-half days, if you prefer.
Given most laptops struggle to deliver six-and-a-half hours of battery life, we think we're onto a good thing here.
Then again, it might just be a Windows 7 bug.
Sob. ®
COMMENTS
@eugene
To be fair I never said it provided a 'runtime' but since runtime is a very simple calculation of "power remaining / consumption" it's really neither here nor there. Windows is at fault here, it's an issue I've personally never seen with linux (or OSX on the rare occasions I've used it). Even if provided with incorrect values Windows would appear to be failing to apply any sort of sanity checking (par for the course with MS software), it would be more correct to display 'Unknown' than a runtime value which is clearly incorrect.
65 hours in six days?
There's me living 24h days, but apparently you computer types go to bed when it gets dark and don't recall/notice any changes when opening their eyes when the light slowly returns.
"Hey that car parked in front of the neighbours tunneled away, never started up."
Strange.
Makes me think
of the new mac ads - it wont have any of the problems my other os has - trust me...
Wow
That's just on the 'balanced' setting. What do you get under 'power saving' ? ; -)
batteries forget
@Anonymous Coward
Batteries will not tell the computer how much runtime is left. They can tell the computer the current power consumption, how much power has been put back into the battery during the last charge, the battery's capacity, and stuff like that. The computer then calculates the runtime from that data. I've seen large numbers like that after coming out of standby, like the other AC mentioned. Fixes itself quickly.
The full-charge-discharge calibration sequence is real - it might take a few months for a battery to reach you - the cells would have self-discharged a little. The battery's chip doesn't account for that, so a full discharge-recharge cycle will recalibrate it.
